Doomsday Preppers Week 13: Pain Is Good

Don lives in Juneau, but if things get bad, he'll make the 800-mile trek to meet Craig at his hidden shelter. Don's concern isn't an economic collapse, but a tsunami.

Twice a year, Don and Craig meet at their bug-out location to stock up on food, and by food, they mean big game. Here, as a sportsman, I get ticked off.

Whether it was merely cutscenes to create an event that didn't actually happen or an accurate protrayal, the producers of Doomsday Preppers create the image of an attempted aquatic drive-by of a moose. Emily and Craig see a moose standing knee-deep in the river, Emily fires and misses the 1,600 pound animal cleanly (which I personally find suspect as close as they appear to be), and then Craig guns the boat to get closer so that Emily can get a shot before Bullwinkle can escape into the thick riverside brush. They are unsuccessful, and the moose lives for another day.

If this were a real survival situation, I could understand the need to put aside hunting ethics for the sake of survival, but this isn't such a situation, and the appearance of attempting to run a moose down for a rushed shot on moving game from a moving, unstable platform was sickening, whether or not it was all for show.

The show's prepping experts from Practical Preppers give Craig and Don the highest score of any prepper on the show so far, and an estimated survival time of 16-20 months. Amusingly, Craig doesn't think the experts from the lower 48 have any clue what they are talking about, and invites them to kiss... well... not his moose.